Many developing technologies have been embraced because they increase accessibility to information. Examples of such technologies include microfilm, magnetic tapes, magnetic disk media, optical disk media, and integrated memories. Integrated memories in particular offer a high degree of accessibility.
Integrated memories are electrical circuits that are configured to store information in digital form. This digital information, or “data,” is readily accessible to any digital device appropriately coupled to the integrated memory. Depending on the particular technology employed, data can be accessed at truly astonishing rates.
Integrated memories are often classified as volatile or non-volatile. Volatile integrated memories suffer loss of stored data in the absence of electrical power, but this shortcoming may be offset by advantages in information density and access rates. Non-volatile memories retain their stored information in the absence of electrical power, but may suffer from a reduced information density, a reduced access rate, and/or a lack of programmability.
A new integrated memory technology is being developed that may offer programmability, non-volatility, high information density, and a moderate access rate. Magnetic integrated memories, as that term is used herein, are integrated memories that use magnetic fields to store data. These magnetic fields can be embedded in magnetic materials that do not rely on the continued presence of electrical power to retain data. A variety of sensing techniques may be employed to detect magnetic fields in these memories and to determine the data these fields represent.
Although the access rate of magnetic memory and other non-volatile memories are gradually being improved, they may still fall short of the access rates offered by certain volatile memory technologies (e.g., static random access memory “SRAM”). Hence, a method for reducing average access times of slow memory technologies may prove advantageous.